User blog:Leipt/Alpha Missile analyze and use
The Alpha Rocket is a great way to compliment your dps with a rather high aoe burst. At level 1 it can one shot a Cerberus Sentinel and mitigate a lot of incoming damage. This is great when you don't have a natural way to travel into a sector and killing the sentinels before Guardians comes and tank your damage. In the cases where the Sentinels hide behind Guardians a missile with aoe helps to get rid of that high incoming damage. But with 200hp to 340hp it will be shot down fast before reaching its target and when shot down it does no damage. Now add the travel time, although fast with 1'320au/m it gives to much time for damage to be dealt. Against a Cerberus ship with the longest range 120au, which most of the enemies have, it will be in damage range for 5,45 seconds before reaching the target. How do one target you might ask. Well my good sire that is another downside. You click the corresponding icon in a similar way as you start your shield and then you click the place you want to send it to like when you send ships. The rocket have no departure time and will be sent right away making it easier to time a shot but you can only send it to a location you can send a ship so an enemy in mid travel can't be shot down but you can time the rocket to hit an asteroid or planet when the ship reach it. Another note regarding targeting is that you wont be able to target the planet/asteroid your rocket ship currently occupy. This wont be a big problem since you can zig zag between asteroids and when the ship have just left the current location you can send a rocket back. So that's the pros and cons now how do we use it? As many of you might have guessed already you can move in with ships to take the aggro and then fire the rocket or send it to help another player engaged in combat. This works wonders for your own use or for supporting corporation members, just be wary of Interceptors with it's multi target guns. The travel time is something you have to get used to and figure out what will happen in the near future in order to time it right, which shouldn't be hard in Hades' Star since movements aren't that free and once travel has started can't be aborted. This timing is less of a problem when used for oneself and only shooting short distances. Now some nice numbers: At level 8, the max, it will have 340hp and still move at 1'320au/m. Is this enough to hit an Interceptor? 340/(120/(1'320/60))=62,33... The 340 is the hp of the rocket the 120 is the targets attack range, 1'320 is the rocket speed and 60 is a divider to get the missile speed in seconds which is 22. 340/(120/22)=62,33... 120/22 gives you the time it will be in target range and is as stated above 5,45. 340/5,45=62,33... Now you have the damage the rocket can take per second in range but still make it, Interceptors got 70dps so the only way to send a rocket in on a point with an Interceptor is if there are 4 other ships that it already attacks or if you shorten the distance and shot it halfway in its attack range. Of course this is with the thought in mind that the ship is stationary. If the enemy moves away the time in range will increase and if moving towards it might, and I stress might, decrease the time in range enough to make the rocket connect with the point as soon as the Interceptor is in range of the aoe and therefore dealing the damage. I haven’t run the numbers for this case and given that, the timing will be so exact that I don’t think a human can pull it of reliably, I wont bother with it. Category:Blog posts